


Navigating the Post-Factual Present (or, How to Child-Proof Your Rogue Science Twitter)

by irisbleufic



Series: One Step Away 'Verse (& Related Excursions) [13]
Category: Back to the Future (Movies)
Genre: Current Events, Established Relationship, F/F, Families of Choice, Fandom Trumps Hate, Inspired by Real Events, M/M, Multi, Politics, Science Husbands, Twitter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-28
Updated: 2017-02-28
Packaged: 2018-09-27 11:13:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10017305
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/irisbleufic/pseuds/irisbleufic
Summary: “Let's go over this again. The joke is that you have a Twitter and don't use it for anything except to follow me, Doc, Ellie, and good old @Huey_Lewis_News. You're the obvious choice to run this bitch, so just keep it signed in on your app in case one of us has to text you something to post, okay?”





	

**January 22, 2017**

Waking up to find Doc's side of the bed empty wouldn't have been so bad in and of itself, except that Marty had a pounding headache fit to rival one of Doc's alcohol-triggered migraines. His eyes felt raw from whatever tear-inducing nightmare he could only half remember _this_ time.

(Just when he thought he'd finally outgrown his anxiety-fueled bad dreams, November had...gone and happened. And a single student suicide attempt at HVH at been one attempt too many.)

 _Think of 1985A_ , Marty thought mechanically, rolling out of bed, staggering to the bathroom. _Whatever's happening now couldn't possibly be worse than what would've happened then_.

He hated himself for taking an almost-double dose of naproxen, but his knees were bothering him, too. Twenty-five years he'd been teaching. Twenty-five _years_. When he'd remarked about six months ago that he was getting too old for this, Doc had sensibly pointed out that he didn't need to keep working. Doc's blogging and book royalties had seen to that.

Marty scrubbed at his face with a towel, critically studying his reflection. He'd be turning forty-nine at exactly the same time as he'd be enduring a retirement party thrown by his colleagues and family.

 _Five months_ , he realized on his way downstairs. _That's all the time in the classroom you have left, and then it's on to fighting this clusterfuck from Doc's side for the rest of your days._

Some news program in the living room chattered counterpoint to the buzzing of Marty's phone in the pocket of his boxers. Marty took his time making coffee in the kitchen, pointedly ignoring the notifications. Doc tweeted so goddamn much these days he could scarcely keep up.

Marty finally shuffled in, two mugs in hand, to find Doc occupied by both the television and his own phone balanced on the arm of the sofa. He set one of the two mugs on the coffee table, noting the half-consumed bowl of Raisin Bran with distaste, and sat down beside Doc.

“You do realize this isn't what normal people do with their Sunday mornings,” Marty remarked.

Doc glanced away from _Meet the Press_ just long enough to administer an insightfully apologetic kiss to Marty's left temple just as Marty took a scalding swig. “More bad dreams?”

Marty nodded, leaning forward to set his mug next to Doc's. “And now I wake up to 'em, too.”

Busy typing something with his right hand, Doc gathered Marty close against his side using his unoccupied left arm. “There's no rest for the wicked, not in this political climate.” He gestured at the television, lifting his chin to accommodate Marty's head tucked beneath it. “It's...something else.”

Marty nodded grimly, wishing he could enjoy the fact that they were wearing the matching in-joke shirts Tiff had given them at Bloggercon a couple of years ago. “Did she just say _alternative facts_?”

Doc sighed, flipping through apps on his phone until he hit something that paused the news report. Shit, it was a _recording_. He was re-watching this soul-sucking mess on purpose.

“I mean, I knew about the number-twisting in Spicer's inauguration attendance report yesterday, but...” Marty dislodged himself from his newfound comfortable position, snagging both mugs off the coffee table, placing one in Doc's hands. “Tell me this is happening,” he said quietly, holding Doc's dark, steady gaze. “Tell me we didn't sleepwalk our way down to the DeLorean, which doesn't even _work_ like that anymore, and zip off to another dystopian hell-hole of a timeline.”

“This is the proverbial whimper that beats out the _equally_ proverbial bang,” Doc said, taking a sip of coffee only once Marty forcibly tipped the mug up to his lips. “Trump's brave new world.”

“Don't even say his fucking name,” Marty muttered. “You'll put me off wanting to eat breakfast.”

“Raising him to the status of You Know Who in those books the kids love so much would, I think, be affording the despot more power than he deserves,” remarked Doc, wryly. “But I'd rather see you eat.”

“Says the guy who didn't even finish his cereal,” Marty shot back. “How about I tell Suz and Jules?”

“Conway comes off as a buffoon to those of us who oppose this administration, but I worry...” Doc frowned, ignoring Marty's halfhearted tease of a threat. “I worry that this dovetails too neatly with some rumors I've heard from a colleague in Washington.”

“Rumors are everywhere,” Marty yawned, already losing his stomach for coffee. “Besides, haven't they labeled every respectable media outlet from here to Benghazi as purveyors of fake news?”

“I trust Preethi, and the situation isn't promising,” Doc replied, side-eyeing a response to one of his tweets. “If what she says in her latest email is correct, some of those executive orders are gag orders.”

“Bad news for scientific freedom of speech?” Marty ventured, wondering how much of the pain in his gut had to do with the topic at hand and how much of it was having taken several extremely harsh pills on an empty stomach. “Bad news for freedom of speech _in general_? He might be in Russia's pocket, but surely he can't...”

They sat for a few moments in ominous silence as Doc started the recording back up again.

“The Courthouse account is responding to my commentary,” he sighed. “Belligerently, I might add.”

“Yeah, well, Mayor Lomax is an asshole,” Marty said. “Wilsons couldn't keep it in the family forever.”

“A conservative one, at that,” Doc replied, passing his phone to Marty so he could have a look at what @HVClockTower had said. “I don't like this business of running unpaid interns ragged on weekends.”

Marty scanned the mayoral account's tweets, gave back Doc's phone, and fished his own out of his pocket. Doc's account, @DrELBrown, boasted a twenty-tweet commentary thread with more retweets and responses than Marty cared to count. He'd never cease to be impressed with how incisively disgusted Doc could manage to sound without actually losing his temper (an act reserved almost solely for those who threatened Marty's privacy and peace of mind in _any_ medium).

“I'm pretty sure people have figured out you're the DocELB with a monster in every blue gym from here to Fairbanks,” Marty said. “Considering how close your Pokémon username is to your Twitter.”

“Of course they have,” said Doc, shrugging, fixing the television screen with one of the sourest looks Marty had seen on him in ages. “Just last week, a young lady at the Memorial Park told me that it had been nothing short of an honor and a privilege to have her, ah, backside handed to her by yours truly. Tiff and the kids didn't let me hear the end of it the whole way home.”

Resolved to put an end to this, at least for the moment, Marty leaned over and kissed Doc. Marty's phone buzzed in his lap, so he broke the contact just enough to mumble, “Hey, Siri—read my text?”

_YOU HAVE A MESSAGE FROM ELLIE. “WE'RE GETTING OUT OF HERE EARLY, BOOYAH. SEE YOU IN TWENTY.” WOULD YOU LIKE TO REPLY?_

“Yeah,” Marty continued, pleased that Doc shifted the kissing action to his cheek instead of pulling away. “ _Sucks to be you, WTF is with your MIL and her church fetish. Waffles will be ready_.”

“You used two trendy acronyms in a single sentence,” Doc teased. “Correctly, I might add.”

“Turn off that trash and come help me,” Marty replied. “The kids' breakfast won't cook itself.”

 

**January 24, 2017**

“What the _actual_ fuck?” said Ellie, from behind her laptop at the dining room table.

“If I ever hear you say that,” Biff said to Julian, who sat in his grandfather's lap eagerly flipping through a Choose Your Own Adventure book, “I'll call you a butthead for the rest of your life.”

“You'll do that anyway,” said Tiff, on the sofa next to Marty, channel-surfing. “What's up, babe?”

“A lot more than can easily be explained in a hundred and forty characters,” Doc muttered, tossing his phone across Marty's lap and into Tiff's. “Shit, as they say, has _definitively_ hit the fan.”

Julian hid his face in the book, giggling, while Susanna looked up from her homework with a smirk.

Sighing heavily, Marty pulled his phone out of his breast pocket. An evening of post-dinner family tranquility had been too much to ask. He started to scroll through Twitter and didn't get very far.

“Badlands National Park went on a climate-change tweeting spree earlier,” Ellie said, eyes wide, fingers flying across her keyboard. “Turns out that E.P.A. gag order really pissed off the Badlands staff, or at least _somebody_ with access to the account. The tweets got deleted, and now there's a spoof Badlands account tweeting all kinds of, you know, _actual_ facts, and there's also this feed calling itself AltUSNatParkService. Are you _seeing_ this, though? Park rangers gone wild!” 

Tiff tossed Doc's phone back to him, fetching her own. “Never mind the fan, shit just got _real_.”

“Jesus Christ,” Marty muttered, already watching retweet after retweet after _retweet_ appear on Doc's Twitter feed. “Take it easy, Doc. The news is already getting around; no need to rush.”

“Hot _damn_ ,” Tiff blurted. “So where's Rogue NASA? Hello, _19_ -fucking- _84_!”

“Jeez, do I wish it still was,” Biff groused, rubbing a worried-looking Julian's shoulders. “None of you eggheads would be carryin' on like this and scarin' the kids if all this internet crap had never—”

“ _I'm_ not scared,” said Susanna, leaping up from where she'd been lying on the floor at Biff's feet, planting both hands defiantly on her hips. “I'm _interested_. Besides, Trump's the butthead.”

“Can't argue with ya there, sweetie, especially since he ain't got no respect for your moms,” said Biff, stroking an alarmed Julian's hair now. “But I can't say the same for your brother. Knock it off.”

Marty had a bad feeling about the fact that Doc had moved on from retweeting to just plain tweeting. He tapped his way over to @HVClockTower and, sure enough, didn't like what he saw there one bit.

“You can't be serious,” he hissed, showing Tiff. “Doc, they're asking you to stop _panic-mongering_?”

“Seems there are an awful lot of people getting reported for nay-saying the White House,” Doc commented flatly, “and getting banned while they're at it. If I didn't know any better, I'd think...”

“Eat my entire _ass_ , Lomax!” Ellie shouted, typing more angrily than before. “ _There_!”

“I don't like the sound of that,” Tiff said, glancing across the room at Ellie. “What have you done?”

“@AltClockTower is now a thing, and y'all had better check your email for the password,” said Ellie, smugly. “There's no way I've got time to run a rogue science twitter by myself, so I'm counting on you gents in retirement and _about_ to be in retirement to do me proud. _And_ you, wifey.”

“Beats getting my established feed shut down,” Doc allowed. “My six thousand followers thank you.”

“How can you eat somebody's entire butt?” asked Julian, bewildered, burrowing into Biff's shoulder.

“It's a figure of speech,” Biff reassured Julian, glaring at Marty. “Can't you talk some sense into 'em?”

“Nope,” Marty said, opening Ellie's email out of curiosity. _FluxC4p4cit0r_ was all that it said.

“You're playing with fire,” Doc warned Ellie mildly, casting Marty a sidelong glance. “Pun intended.”

“I dunno,” said Marty, breaking into a slow grin, returning Tiff's high five. “This might just be fun.”

 

**January 27, 2017**

“Let's go over this again. The joke is that you have a Twitter and don't use it for anything except to follow me, Doc, Ellie, and good old @Huey_Lewis_News. You're the obvious choice to run this bitch, so just keep it signed in on your app in case one of us has to text you something to post, okay?”

Marty chewed the inside of his cheek, glancing up from grading a stack of quizzes. “Uh, _really_?”

“Really _really_ ,” replied Tiff, earnestly, reaching across the table to pat his wrist. She took a long swallow of wine, making a grab for Marty's phone, which was currently running the Pokémon Go app with both incense and a lucky egg on full blast. “Here, I'll even do it for ya. Lazy motherfucker.”

“I'm busy,” Marty reminded her, drinking the remainder of Tiff's wine since his was long gone. “You know, like an actual adult with an actual job. As opposed to a fake one. Or an alternative—”

“Hey, smart-ass,” Tiff slurred, snatching back her glass to find a meager few drops left in it. “Just because I decided to become the stay-at-home mom when El hit it big doesn't mean I don't work.”

“S'not what I meant,” Marty sighed, watching helplessly as Tiff signed into @AltClockTower on his phone. “It's more that I'm afraid of letting this become too much of a distraction when I should be concentrating on making my last few months at HVH count. The kids are _scared_ , Tiff.”

“Says the guy who thought this would be fun. Just look at the RTs your hubby's seventy-two hours' worth of contributions have gotten so far. He can't keep this up solo, though, because people will start to wonder why @DrELBrown's mouth never moves while @AltClockTower is talking.”

“Jeez, _fine_ ,” Marty sighed, grabbing his phone out of Tiff's hands. “He's gonna be out with Ellie and the kids for at least another hour or so. What should I post? More of the data you guys dug up on soil contamination down at the Ravine? Just tell me where you left off in that file Ellie emailed around, and I'll—”

“Jesus fuck, _no_ , just RT content from Badlands and NASA for a bit. Lomax is already livid.”

“Whatever you say,” Marty sighed, tapping his way to @AltClockTower's Following list. “RTs ahoy.”

“I've been thinking about Ellie's choice of password,” Tiff admitted, swaying across Marty's kitchen to fetch their three-quarters-empty bottle of Rosenblum Cellars' latest hit off the counter. “Like...a _lot_.”

“From the instant we told her the story and showed her that photo from '55,” Marty said, firing off a sequence of retweets only to see @DrELBrown liked and retweet every one of them within seconds, “I knew you'd found the right woman. Anybody else would've reported us to the authorities.”

“What authorities would've _believed_ it?” Tiff snorted, refilling both of their glasses halfway.

“There was still that shit with the Libyans,” Marty murmured. “One of them died, and the others...”

“It's not just the present administration that's doing terrible shit to human beings,” Tiff said softly. “This is one atrocity in a long, long line of 'em. Granted, you could say Reagan expedited matters.”

“I wish I'd paid more attention when I was a kid,” Marty sighed. “Before I met Doc, I mean. _Heavy_.”

“Are you messing with my head, McFly, or did you just say that in dead earnest?” Tiff asked.

Marty shrugged, offering her an apologetic smile. “Maybe both. I can't sleep for worrying about you and the kids, about my kids at school, about _Doc_. We're running for our lives, and no time machine can fix this. Not anymore.”

Tiff regarded him apprehensively, shoving both fists under her chin, looking for all the world like a teenager again. “You don't think you were still just a kid when it started?”

Marty set down his phone, took another swig of wine, resumed his pen, and squinted at her. “Huh?”

“Time travel,” Tiff clarified moodily, swilling the contents of her glass. “You and, uh. You and Doc.”

Marty shook his head vehemently at the next quiz on the stack. “This has nothing to do with politics.”

“I've always been impressed with you,” Tiff said earnestly, her eyes shining too brightly under the lights. “You _know_ that, right? You're just so—I can't even think how—so fuckin' _brave_ to have done it all, and I mean—Marty, I _mean_ —time travel isn't even the half of it.”

Marty gritted his teeth, eyes lowered, unable to look Tiff in the eyes as long as they were both crying.

“I'm wasn't brave enough to save innocent lives back then, so what makes you think I'm brave now?”

“To hell with the nuke-happy terrorists for a sec, okay? You saved Doc from hitting another self-destruct button, and you saved me from, I dunno, being shipped off to de-gayifying camp by Mom.”

Marty looked up at her, startled. “Surely she wouldn't have done that. Not if your dad had any say.”

“Dad never had the balls to stand up to her until _you_ defended me to him that one time at the diner,” Tiff hiccuped, rubbing the tears from her eyes. “Didn't you know that? God, you're so oblivious.”

Marty sat back in his chair, far too intoxicated to have any business evaluating his students' labors.

“Right. It doesn't take a DeLorean to change things,” he said, picking up his phone. “What's next?”

“I'm too drunk to dig up trufax,” Tiff sniffled, “so let's just tweet smack about the Cheeto-in-Chief. But afterward, I'm gonna make you play that Lady Gaga cover Doc tells me you've been working on.”

“Hey, Siri,” Marty sighed, watching as Tiff composed a tweet, “play _Diamond Heart_.”

“Aw,” said Tiff, hitting post with a satisfied cackle. “I was hoping for _Million Reasons_.”

 

**February 2, 2017**

“I don't care if _our antics weren't professional_ ,” Marty mumbled into Doc's pillow, his chin hooked over Doc's shoulder as they basked in the early-morning quiet. “They got more RTs than some of the data you and Ellie chucked on there. Enterprises like this need a sense of humor, trust me.”

“It _was_ awfully satisfying to see Lomax lose her temper on the air,” Doc admitted, rubbing Marty's back with one hand while he (undoubtedly, even though Marty couldn't turn his head to verify the assumption) held up his phone and scrolled through Twitter with the other. “Alas. Shadow.”

“Shadow?” Marty asked, turning his head so that he could breathe again and nip at Doc's neck while he was at it. “English, Doc. I'm barely awake here, and my, ah, _circulation_ isn't great right now.”

“The weather-prognosticating groundhog in Pennsylvania,” Doc clarified. “Saw it. Ominous.”

“I'm gonna call in sick today if you don't do something about the other thing,” Marty warned.

 

**February 18, 2017**

“ _Score_!” Ellie shouted, almost causing Marty to drop his fork. “Guess who's in Twitter jail?”

“It's either Doc or AltClockTower,” said Tiff, around a mouthful of Ellie's fry bread. “Who cares?”

“Doc's been the recipient of that honor, like, four times in the past couple of weeks,” Ellie replied, scrolling with a satisfied look on her face. “I'm so proud of our baby, I can't even...” Her smile faded as she got back to the most recent tweet in the AltClockTower feed. “Wait a second.”

Instinctively, Marty reached for his back pocket—only to remember that his phone was absent.

“You're gonna have to explain what you mean,” he sighed. “I think my phone's in your kitchen.”

“What do you mean, in the kitchen?” Tiff asked, by now wearing the same perplexed expression as her wife as she regarded her own phone. “You let Julian take it out hunting with...him and...”

“One step ahead of you,” Ellie sighed, fixing Marty with a deadpan look. She handed him her phone.

 _We learned in school why the sky is blue_ , Marty read several tweets down from the top. _It is because of water in the atmosphere. That is a fact._

“He's, uh, not wrong,” Marty said. “Jules knows what he's talking about when it comes to clouds.”

“How about you have a look at the most recent ones?” asked Tiff, unable to hide her proud smirk.

 _Trump means fart in England_ , Marty read at the top of the feed. _I googled it. Also fact._

“Do you think Doc knows that's what they're doing instead of catching Gen2 monsters?” Ellie asked.

 

**February 27, 2017**

“You,” Marty said, looking up from his phone. “At the back. Denise and Jervais. What's so funny?”

“You being in charge of study hall,” muttered somebody at the center of the room. More snickering.

“I can take a hint,” Marty said, setting down his phone. “For the record, _yes_. I'm on Team Mystic.”

“Awesome!” Annette blurted, at her habitual front-row seat, and then covered her mouth. “I, uh...”

“There's no way Annette and I are the only ones,” Marty prompted. “If you want attendance and compliance marks for today, you'd better spill. C'mon. Tell me we're not the _only_ blues here?”

In the back row, Denise reluctantly raised her hand. “Can you tell Doc to stop kicking me out of gyms?”

The rest of the classroom was split between Valor and Instinct, but Jervais remained noncommittal.

Marty met the kid's eyes, mindful that the pain of having nearly lost their cousin was still fresh.

“If you'd like to change the subject, you can,” he prompted. “There's more to life than your XP count.”

Jervais nodded, accepting Marty's challenge. “AltClockTower,” said the ninth-grader. “You know it?”

Marty returned the nod, keeping his expression neutral. “It's no secret I follow that account,” he said.

“Yeah, but _your_ Twitter is empty,” said Jervais, not quite accusingly. “ _Totally_ empty.”

“I don't have that much to say outside the classroom,” Marty replied. “Besides, Doc says enough.”

“Thing is, ACT's updated every time you've stopped scrolling or typing to tap for like the past twenty-two minutes,” Jervais pointed out, turning slightly pale. “Like _clockwork_ , man. Uncanny.”

“Then the question,” Marty said, “is really whether you believe in coincidence or in observation.”

Jervais cracked a half-smile for the first time in _weeks_. “That's none of your business.”

“Good answer,” Marty replied, already starting to type. A password-change wouldn't go amiss.


End file.
